DNS

dee-en-ESSnoun, abbreviation

Topic: Building and running a site

1. Short for domain name system: the internet’s directory, which translates a domain name such as futurestore.co.uk into the numeric address of the server where the website lives.
2. When you move a website or change your email provider, you change DNS records to point the name at the new place. Changes can take anything from a few minutes to a day or two to spread across the internet, which is why a site can look old to some visitors and new to others during a move. Wrong DNS records are one of the commonest reasons a site or email suddenly stops working.

Example After the DNS change, some visitors saw the old site for a few hours.

See also Domain name Hosting SSL certificate